The Michigan State University campus shootings came just about 14 months after the mass shooting at Oxford High School, which left four students dead.
A good number of Oxford graduates chose to attend MSU, which means they’re going through the same kind of trauma again.
Linda Watson raced to her son, who had just been shot at Oxford High School about 14 months ago.
Watson’s son survived, but he still has PTSD. He still suffers from pain from that gunshot wound, and Monday (Feb. 13), he did something no one should have to do. He contacted his brother at MSU and talked him through how to survive a mass shooting.
“I told him what to do, what not to do like lights off,” said Jarrod Watson. “Be on your phone and make sure that you have your charger with you so you can contact people. Don’t call them because it can alert people of where your location is. I have no words.”
His parents were in shock, they were in grief, and they were outraged.
“It was horrible, except for this time it was a little bit different,” said Linda. “I got a call with Aiden that said, ‘Mom, I’ve been shot, help me.’ And when I got the text message from Michigan State, I had to get a hold of Caleb. And we couldn’t get a hold of him at first.”
Oxford is in the unique position of living in a world where lightning strikes twice.
“He’s crying and barricading his door,” Linda said.
On Nov. 30, 2021, a teenage classmate opened fire at Oxford High School, killing four, injuring seven, and traumatizing hundreds of students. Many of them graduated high school and went to college, and some landed at MSU only to go through a second mass shooting incident in less than two years.
Oxford Fire Department Chief Matthew Majestic was in that high school that day.
“It sucks,” said Majestic. “It’s a terrible thing. You don’t want to go through that. Nobody wants to go through that.”
Majestic saw things he will never forget, and Monday night, when Ingham County called for help, he sent a rig and his firefighter paramedics to a second mass shooting scene in their lifetime.
“But once it happened, everybody kind of goes, ‘OK, we’ve been through it. It’s not supposed to happen again.’”
For parents and students, it is hard to wrap their heads around that this could happen once, let alone twice.
“We can’t go anywhere without the potential of it happening,” Jarrod said. “I’m not pro ‘Get rid of guns,’ I mean, I get it, but these are laws written 300 years ago. We need to make common sense laws.”
